to advance himself in his chosen field of knowledge, quite such a
thrill as that which must be his when he matriculates at one of the
scores of educational institutions in that quarter of Paris to which
the ardent, aspiring youth of all the western world have been directing
their eager feet from time immemorial.

Cloistral, scholastic atmosphere, with its grave beauty, as at Oxford
and Cambridge, he will not find in the Paris Latin Quarter.

Paris does not segregate her students. Conceiving them to be studying
for life, she aids them to do it in the midst of life marvelously
abundant. They do not go out of the world--so to speak--to learn to
live and work in the world. They go, rather, into a life of
extraordinary variety and fullness, out of which--it is expected--they
will discover how to choose whatever is most needful to their success
and well-being.

There is no feeling of being shut in to a term of study. There is,
rather, the feeling of being "turned loose" in a place of vast
opportunity of which one may make as much use as he is able.

To a young man of Ferdinand Foch's naturally serious mind, deeply
impressed by his country's tragedy, the Latin Quarter of Paris in those
Fall days of 1871 was a sober place indeed.

Beautiful Paris, that Napoleon III had done so much to make splendid,
was scarred and seared on every hand by the German bombardment and the
fury of the communards, who had destroyed nearly two hundred and fifty
public and other buildings. The government of France had deserted the
capital and moved to Versailles--just evacuated by the Germans.